Starchild, a candidate in the District 8 supervisor race, is
fighting prostitution charges after he was arrested in a police sting operation
last winter in a Fremont hotel. Already struggling to be taken seriously as a
political contender, the perennial candidate could face jail time if a jury
convicts him.

Despite his arrest, Starchild said he saw no reason why he
should not enter the supervisor race. He first ran for the District 8 seat in
2002 and made his first foray in politics when he ran for state Assembly in
2000. Two years ago he tried to win election to the city's school board.

"There is a certain virtue about being open about this
stuff. I don't have skeletons in my closet; they are all out in the living room
partying," said the bisexual escort and erotic dancer. "Willie Brown
has done all kinds of things that would have sunk other peoples' political
careers but it didn't hurt his because he was open about them and made fun of
it."

So far, he said he has not met with any negative responses
when voters learn of his tangle with the police.

"I think I am fortunate because I live in a
jurisdiction like San Francisco where people are pretty tolerant in a certain
respect. I haven't gotten any negative reaction at all, either they are shy or
too guilty to say it to my face," said Starchild, who legally changed his
name from Chris Fox in 1998 and lists his age as 35 on an online escort
profile.

His legal troubles began on the morning of December 6 last
year when a woman responded to his escort advertisement on Craigslist.com.
According to various accounts of his arrest he posted online and provided via a
friend to the Bay Area Reporter,
Starchild received a call from the woman, who identified herself as Sara,
asking him to meet her and her friend, Tiffany, at the Best Western Garden
Court Inn on Mowry Avenue in Fremont.

After taking BART from San Francisco to the inn, Starchild
said he arrived at the hotel and met the woman he had spoken to on the phone,
who gave her name this time as Heather. He said he questioned her about the
name change – she said she did not want to use her real name on the phone
– but was not overly alarmed by the discrepancy.

Once inside the room, he noticed cash on a bedside table but
declined at first to take it from the women. He began to undress, lit several
candles and opened a bottle of wine he had brought, while the women peppered
him with questions about what kinds of activities they would engage in.

According to the accounts, at this point Starchild heard a
voice shout "Fremont police" from outside the door and six officers
barged into the room with a canine officer followed by a television cameraman
who identified himself as a KRON 4 employee. The police placed him in handcuffs
and charged him with soliciting prostitution.

At his arraignment in January, Starchild pleaded not guilty
to the charges and has vowed to fight them at trial. He said he declined a plea
deal offered by the Alameda County District Attorney's office in which he would
have been required to plead guilty to the prostitution charge, perform 80 hours
of community service, pay a $500 fine, and be placed on three years probation.

"I am not making a deal. It was horrible," he
said. "What happens then when you are on probation they can come and
search your home at any time. If I was to get arrested for anything else, even
protesting at a public rally, that could be a violation of my probation. If I
were arrested again for soliciting prostitution – regardless if you are a
client or the sex worker – the way the law treats it, it is more serious
each time and the penalties are greater the second time around."

A member of the Libertarian Party and an activist for sex
worker rights, Starchild has lashed out at the Fremont Police Department for
what he sees as a waste of taxpayer's money in a city where the department
refuses to answer home burglar alarms due to a lack of resources and personnel.

"People should be given the right to do whatever they
want when it comes to sex, especially if they are adults and it is consensual.
There should not be laws against it," said Starchild.

The assistant D.A. handling the case, Jason Chin, did not
return calls seeking comment. The court has yet to set a date for the start of
the trial. Barring another plea deal, Starchild said he fully expects his case
to go to court. He said he hopes he can beat the charges, but at the same time,
he is apprehensive about standing before a jury in Fremont.

"No, I am not confident. It is certainly going to go to
trial unless they offer me something better than they are now," said
Starchild, who has already spent $1,500 defending himself and has asked friends
and supporters to help him pay his legal bills. "I don't know how a jury
in Fremont will think about this. It certainly is not hopeless but there is
always a chance I will be wrongfully convicted for this."

In the meantime, he plans to use his campaign for supervisor
to champion decriminalizing prostitution. He attended a forum on the issue held
earlier this month and is helping to circulate a petition calling on San
Francisco officials to stop arresting sex workers. [See story, page 15.] He is
also calling on people in the sex worker industry to "come out of the
closet" and educate their friends, family, and neighbors about their
profession.

"It is similar to queer people coming out of the
closet. If all the sex worker users and workers – people who are involved
in the sex industry – were open and public about it there is no way the
bigoted and discriminatory laws we have now would not crumble overnight,"
he said. "What is tremendously ironic about the whole prostitution thing
is it is not illegal to have sex for money according to the government as long
as you are being filmed. Doing it as a porn star it is perfectly okay but if no
one is watching you then it is considered a crime. I mean, think about that for
a while.

"It is such a huge, glaring hypocrisy. It really blows
my mind how people can take this stuff seriously and act like we have to have
prostitution laws otherwise the moral standing of society would collapse,"
he added. "I think most San Franciscans do support decriminalization and
don't see why we should be wasting taxpayer money on this when there are so
many other pressing needs for it."

Still working on launching his campaign Web site, Starchild
said he is also an advocate of re-opening the city's bathhouses, which have
been closed since the 1980s due to the AIDS epidemic. He said it is all part of
his philosophy as a Libertarian, though he stressed he is running in the
nonpartisan race as a small "l" libertarian.

"I really believe strongly in ideas of freedom and
letting people make their own choices in life. I don't see any candidates out
there representing that view," he said. "It is a view desperately
needed in our country and city. I want to do my part and inject that into the
dialogue."

He also argues that due to the city's implementation of
ranked choice voting, where voters rank their first and second choice
candidates, he could play an important role in who ultimately wins the race. At
this time, though, he said he has not decided to support one of his two rivals
– incumbent Supervisor Bevan Dufty and attorney Alix Rosenthal –
over the other for purposes of ranked choice voting.

"I can easily see a scenario in this race where people
pick me as their first choice vote and then their vote would continue to go for
Alix or Bevan as their second choice. They wouldn't be jeopardizing anything by
voting for me and would send a message," he said.
"Hopefully, I will win outright.
You can never say never."

This is the second in a series of profiles on the District 8
candidates.